The Skywalk Collapse & The 5 Decision Questions Every Construction Leader Must Train Their Team On | Ep. 457
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Release Date: 08/17/2026
Stop Taking Shortcuts: The Shortcut Delusion | Ep. 466
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Why does your construction business feel more chaotic the bigger it gets? In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the shortcut delusion and why today's fires are bills for shortcuts you took months ago. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Meet Shortcut Steve. He's the voice in your head that says, "Let's just get started. We'll figure out the rest later." He tells you to take the job before you know how you'll staff it, hire the person before the role is clear, and grow before the systems exist. Todd Dawalt believed Shortcut Steve for years,...
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How You’re Accidentally Making Your Team Resist Change | Ep. 465
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Your team keeps resisting new processes and software, and the way you roll out change might be the reason. Dr. Anna Hunter, Director of Learning & Development at JobTread, breaks down why teams resist change and how to lead them through it so it sticks. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 You introduce a new process or a new piece of software, and within a week the team is right back to the old way of working. You’ve explained it three times. They nodded along in the meeting, and then nothing changed. Before you blame the team, sit with...
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You’re Solving the Wrong Problems in Your Construction Business | Ep. 464
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, Todd Dawalt explains why construction business owners keep solving the wrong problems, and how looking upstream at your pre-construction process fixes the chaos at its root cause. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Years ago, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC was slowly being damaged by its own cleaning crew. The stone kept getting dirty, so the obvious fix was to clean it harder and more often. But the real cause was nowhere near the stone, and it took someone asking a...
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Stop Putting Out Fires by Building a Real Pre-Construction Process | Ep. 463
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
On this rerun episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, custom home builder Eric Brownson sits down with our Director of Customer Success, Leyah Hostetter, to talk about how he used to wake up three hours behind, stuck in reactive mode and buried in daily firefighting. Here's how building a real pre-construction process changed how he runs his construction business. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 For twenty years, Eric Brownson ran his construction business the way a lot of custom home builders do: as the backstop for everything,...
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Why Generic Business Coaching Never Works for Your Construction Company | Ep. 462
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Kris Miller runs a commercial, multifamily, and residential construction company in Denver, and he is on his way to cutting his workweek from 80 hours down to 10. In this episode, he shares the construction business systems that got him moving, from a simple weekly client update to an accountability chart that finally put the right people in the right seats. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 For years, Kris and his two partners treated the rough handoff between preconstruction and the field as just part of the job. They would get...
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How to Turn Customer & Employee Excuses Into Action | Ep. 461
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Every construction business owner hears the same objections: now isn't a good time, this will take too long, and it's too big to tackle. In this episode, Todd Dawalt breaks down the three excuses that keep customers and employees from taking action, and the calibrated questions that get them to move. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 If you run a construction company, you already know the moment. A prospect tells you now just isn't a good time, and the job stalls out and dies. Or you ask an employee to take on a new process and they say they...
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Why Starting Projects Too Soon Is Killing Your Profit | Ep. 460
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Todd Dawalt explains why starting construction projects before they're fully ready creates "dead days," the hidden overhead that bleeds profit out of your business. This episode breaks down the "just enough to start" trap and how a complete pre-construction handoff and buyout protect your schedule and margins. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Most construction companies are rewarded for movement. Everybody wants to see sawdust and smell diesel, so jobs kick off the moment there's "just enough to start." Todd Dawalt calls this the just enough...
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How to Design Your Construction Business for Growth, Profit, and Freedom with Tom Raisanen | Ep. 459
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
Designing a construction business with the right systems and processes from day one is how you build for lasting profit and freedom. New Hampshire home builder Tom Raisanen shares how he set up pre-construction, project handoffs, a CEO schedule, and his first hire so the company can eventually run without him. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Here's how to build a construction business that runs without you, starting with the systems most owners wait too long to put in place. After 15 years in his family's construction business, Tom...
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What To Do When Your Construction Business Finally Runs Without You | Ep. 458
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
You systematized your construction business and now it runs without you, so what do you actually do next? Todd Dawalt and CEO Alliance coach Monish Khadye break down the operator-to-owner shift and how to build a construction business that supports the life you want. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉 Most construction business owners spend years chasing the same goal: a company that runs without them. But what happens once you actually get there? In this episode, Todd Dawalt sits down with Monish Khadye, a coach who leads the CEO Alliance...
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The Skywalk Collapse & The 5 Decision Questions Every Construction Leader Must Train Their Team On | Ep. 457
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast
The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt skywalk collapse came down to one unchecked decision, and it holds a hard lesson for every construction business owner. In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, Todd Dawalt shares a decision-making framework of five questions and four tips to train your team to make better calls in the field and in pre-construction. ⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: 👉Your team makes dozens of decisions a day, and most were never trained on how. In this episode I break down the five questions and four tips that help...
info_outlineThe 1981 Kansas City Hyatt skywalk collapse came down to one unchecked decision, and it holds a hard lesson for every construction business owner. In this episode of the Construction Leading Edge podcast, Todd Dawalt shares a decision-making framework of five questions and four tips to train your team to make better calls in the field and in pre-construction.
⚡Schedule a Business Evaluation Call with The Construction Leading Edge Team: HERE
👉Your team makes dozens of decisions a day, and most were never trained on how. In this episode I break down the five questions and four tips that help construction leaders make sharper calls under pressure, before the pressure hits. Give it a listen, then share it with whoever on your team needs it most.
On any given day, the people on your construction team make dozens of calls that touch your money, your schedule, and your safety. Most of them have never been trained on how to make a decision well. Todd Dawalt opens this episode with the 1981 Kansas City Hyatt skywalk collapse, a disaster that traces back to a single design change nobody stopped to question, and uses it to show what happens when decisions get made on gut feel instead of a framework.
From there, Todd lays out a practical decision-making framework any construction leader can teach: five questions to run before acting, and four tips for moving faster without moving recklessly. You'll hear where Colin Powell's 40/70 rule fits, why thinking three steps ahead saved one company from serious liability, and how the cost of indecision stacks up while you wait.
The through-line is pre-construction. The more decisions your team locks in before a job starts, the fewer expensive fires they fight once it's running. If your project managers and superintendents keep winging it in the field, this is the episode to share with them, and a preview of the exact skills Todd is training at the Construction Leadership Advance in Nashville this October.
Key Takeaways:
00:00 The Collapse That Started With One Bad Decision
03:54 How Many Decisions Your Team Makes Daily
06:26 Construction Leadership Advance in Nashville
07:34 Five Questions for Better Decisions
08:42 Question 1: When Does the Risk Profile Change?
10:02 Question 2: Do You Even Need to Decide?
11:22 Question 3: Who Should Be Involved?
13:28 Question 4: What Is the Desired End Result?
14:44 Construction Leadership Advance: Second Mention
16:36 Question 5: What Is the Cost of Indecision?
19:44 Business Evaluation Call
23:22 Tip 1: The Colin Powell 40/70 Rule
24:50 Tip 2: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Three Step Rule
28:02 Tip 3: Set a Decision Deadline
30:18 Tip 4: Decisions Take Seconds
34:24 Construction Leadership Advance: Final Mention
35:04 Recap and Closing
Additional Resources:
⚡Register for The Construction Leadership Advance - October 22-23, 2026 in Nashville -
HERE
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⚡Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
⚡Visit The Construction Leading Edge for more information: HERE
The Construction Leading Edge Podcast helps construction business owners maximize their revenue, eliminate chaos, systematize their work, and win back their time.
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